1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording and reproducing technique of data recorded on a recording medium such as an optical disc, memory card, or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various video cameras which use large-capacity recording media such as optical discs, memory cards, and the like are commercially available. As a recording medium, for example, a DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) is known. A recordable DVD such as a DVD-R, DVD-RW, or the like has a capacity of 4.7 Gbytes. The DVD-Video adopts MPEG2 as a moving image compression encoding processing technique. By compressing an image signal by MPEG2, one DVD can record video data having an image quality as high as the conventional S-VHS for about two hours. DVD recorders which record and reproduce TV broadcast programs and the like on the DVD have rapidly prevailed in recent years.
On the other hand, portable video cameras using the DVD as a recording medium are also available. This video camera adopts 8-cm DVD media which have compatibility to 12-cm DVD media, and have a capacity of 1.4 Gbytes in place of the aforementioned conventional 12-cm DVD media having a capacity of 4.7 Gbytes. In this manner, high portability equivalent to the conventional DV video cameras is realized (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-257021).
Since the 8-cm DVD medium has a capacity as small as 1.4 Gbytes, as described above, it can record only data for about 30 minutes under the recording condition of 6 Mbits/sec as a general recording rate. When the recording rate is set to be, e.g., 3 Mbits/sec to attain long-time recording, each disc can record data for one hour, but the image quality deteriorates considerably. When the recording rate is set to be, e.g., 9 Mbits/sec to record video data with high image quality, one disc can only record data for 20 minutes. In this manner, in either case, if the user wants to record video and audio data for several hours while traveling, he or she must use a plurality of media.
On the other hand, 12-cm DVD media are currently generally distributed rather than 8-cm DVD media due to prevalence of the aforementioned DVD recorders. In such situation, a use method of dubbing and storing the contents recorded on a plurality of 8-cm DVD media on a 12-cm DVD medium may become mainstream.
However, when the user records the contents using a plurality of 8-cm media described above by a video camera, and attempts to dub the contents on the aforementioned 12-cm medium, such contents often become very hard to record on the medium within its capacity. Hence, an edit operation is required to collect required contents in consideration of the recordable capacity of the 12-cm medium. However, this edit operation is very time-consuming. Especially, when the original video data are recorded across a plurality of media, the user must manually calculate the total time by noting down respective recording times on a memo pad or the like, resulting in very troublesome operations.